the lucky one
by michellejjones
Summary: "The world loves a pretty face. They worship them, crowding around innocence and talent like a moth to a flame. Natasha Romanoff has known this since grade school. Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool. But, there is one thing the world loves more. And that is a good, old fashioned monster." [Oneshot. Natasha-centric.]


**Yo, so, thirteenth (I think) fanfiction in a tribute I'm doing to Taylor Swift, all based on songs from my favorite album by her: _Red._ This one is based on her song, _The Lucky One,_ and it's Natasha-centric. Now, forgive me for any mistakes I make, I haven't seen TWS in a while.**

 **Disclaimer:** **I don't own anything _Marvel._ Or any songs Taylor Swift sings. Unfortunately.**

 **Title:** **the lucky one.**

 **Summary:** **"The world loves a pretty face.** **They worship them, crowding around innocence and talent like a moth to a flame. Natasha Romanoff has known this since grade school. Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool.** **But, there is one thing the world loves more.** **And that is a good, old fashioned monster." [Oneshot. Natasha-centric.]**

 **WARNING:** **MAJOR TIME JUMPS. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. BE READY. Also, this fic includes some quotes straight from the song, so don't scratch your brain out wondering where that quote is from. You've been warned.**

* * *

 **the lucky one.**

 **by clarabella wanderling.**

 _"Now it's big black cars, and Riviera views,  
and your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you.  
And your secrets end up splashed on the news front_ page."  
 **~Taylor Swift, _The Lucky One._**

* * *

When Natasha was ten, she killed a dog.

They'd let her adopt him from the shelter -a cute Labrador- and he had lived with Natasha (or, Natalia, as she had been called at the time) for eleven months.

When month twelve came, they told her to kill him.

Honestly, it hadn't been that hard. Jupiter, as she'd called him, was hard to take care of for a small ten-year-old. It still stung a bit when she sliced him with her dagger, but it hadn't truly been scarring. When her handler asked her how she felt, she'd responded, _"не плохо , я больше кошек человека , так или иначе."_

("Not bad, I'm more of a cat person, anyway.")

That had, apparently, been the wrong thing to say. When Natasha was twelve, they bought her a cat, and she loved her. Natasha named her _смерть,_ which, in English, meant _Death._

They let Natasha keep the cat for two years, long enough for her to develop a deep affection for the her. One day, on a hot summer afternoon, after her ballet class, her handler asked Natasha to snap Death's neck. The black cat was sitting on her lap, and Natasha looked down at it in sudden horror. Her handler had leered at her, taunting her, asking Natasha if she wanted to be the best, or if she wanted to die as a shameful Russian.

When Natasha killed Death, her hands did not shake.

"How do you feel?" Her teacher had asked her.

Natasha set the cat down, it's eyes now bloody and vacant. With a firm hand, she straightened her dress.

"Lucky." She'd responded. She was, after all, alive.

Many, many years later, Natasha Romanoff wondered, not for the first time, if she really was the lucky one.

 **...**

It's a weird thing, this business of identity.

She (Natasha Romanoff) had known this for a long, long time. Countless lives, from a spider on the wall to a hero standing tall, splayed out before her, a tiresome span of what it means to be a spy. Or, more specifically, an assassin. They (both S.H.I.E.L.D., and all the monsters of the Red Room) had trained her to lock each life away, to focus on the one in which she was currently inhabiting. They had also trained her on what to do should a cover be blown. Retrieve the information at all costs, because that was your goal even when your cover was still intact. It's the only thing that never changes in a mission: the end goal. Focus all your remaining resources on that goal, and the danger becomes irrelevant (death and dying was never an issue with the Black Widow; she had, after all, at the age of fourteen, killed it).

So, when Natasha's secrets end up splashed on the news front page, decked out in colored monstrosities, she treats it as a blown cover, because it is. Every cover she's ever had has been simultaneously blown, and by who?

Why, by her, of course.

She treats her real personality, the flirtatious spy with a dry sense of humor and a secret love for children, _Natasha Romanoff,_ as her end goal, to salvage Natasha Romanoff no matter the cost, because she is by far her favorite cover.

Or maybe she's not a cover, maybe she's the real deal.

Whatever this new person may be, she isn't a saint. Natasha isn't stupid. But she's closer to human than anything she'll ever achieve, and so, Natasha, when the worst of her stories are being turned into scary tales that big siblings tell their baby sisters in the dark, clings to that.

Natalia Romanova, Natalie Rey, Thalia Riggan, Duchess Romana, they are all dead. Natasha Romanoff is lucky to be alive.

Or, so they tell her.

 **...**

When S.H.I.E.L.D. took her in, the first thing they asked her to do was change her name. "Start anew," Clint had suggested.

"What should I pick?" Natasha had asked.

He shrugged. "Something American. Something that calls to you. How about Lacy?"

The redhead made a face, and Clint grinned. It took weeks to find a name, so long that Phil Coulson finally stepped in and said, "You know, you don't have to stray too far from your original name."

Natasha (at the time they simply called her "Agent") tilted her head, "I don't?"

"Nah. Do you like the name Natalia Romanova? I do. It's pretty. The only issue is that it's got Russian in it, and blood on it. What is it Clint calls you?"

"Nat," Natasha supplied.

"Nat." Phil put a hand on his neck to scratch it. "Nat. Natalie?"

Natasha shook her head. "Natavia?" She asked. "Natasha?"

Phil's head snapped up, and a slow smile spread across his face. "That's it. Natasha. Beautiful, yet mysterious. Like you."

"You make me blush." Natasha smirked.

Coulson extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, I'm Coulson. Phil Coulson."

Natasha chuckled. "Natasha. Natasha... Romanoff." She shook the older man's hand.

"A pleasure." He responded, and then gave her a wave before walking away.

That was the day Natasha Romanoff was born.

That was one of the few points in the spy's life where she'd considered herself lucky.

 **...**

The world loves a pretty face.

They worship them, crowding around innocence and talent like a moth to a flame. Natasha Romanoff has known this since grade school. Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool. So, to succeed, she forced herself to perfection, to be pretty and deadly all at once. It wasn't long before a nickname stuck.

 _("Why do you call her that?"_

 _"What? The Black Widow? Because, my darling, she is patient, and beautiful, and deadly, all at once.")_

Her name became a whisper among all the people in her line of work, as well known as the brightest diamond.

Her handler, before he was shot when he was deemed unnecessary, told her how lucky she was, to be the best, to be precious and perfect, to be alive and wanted. And she, being young and naive, believed him.

Oh, how wrong she was.

Big black cars and riverside views lined her sight, rewards from murders that helped a country that she at the time thought was perfect, like her covers. To the brainwashed Natalia Romanova, her life was perfect. The lover sitting in the foyer (who she was due to kill, slowly, and painfully, for information on Ronald Reagan, current president of the USA) didn't know her, not really, but he was head over heels for her beauty and sense of humor, and, when she killed him, she felt nothing, only annoyance at the fact that her pretty white dress got stained.

They told her how lucky she was, to be working for them, to be so beautiful and wise. And, she believed them.

When a man with eyes like a hawk, snuck into her bedroom and captured her, the Black Widow, she could hardly believe it. Beautiful, deathly Natalia Romanova, captured?

The Red Room had taught her many things.

But they had not taught her to swallow her pride.

This man, codename Hawkeye, whispered truths into her ear that twisted its way into her mind, glued there like an itch she could not scratch. She didn't want to listen to his sickening logic, but Natalia was smart, and her mind, even in dreams, fought to snap itself out of the prison she did not even know she was inhabiting. Hawkeye always let her go at the end of his visits. He came at odd hours, and Natalia could never catch him.

They told her how lucky she was, but Natalia no longer felt lucky, she felt confused. She no longer felt pretty, but used, and so disgusting, because, at the time, she was.

When they sent her to kill a nine year old boy, she went, mind throbbing with all the indecency and lies that was her life. The boy was a handsome young thing, blond hair and freckles. She caught him in her web ("I'm your new nanny, Nancy."), and was about to dispose of him, when Hawkeye's words twisted their way into her mind.

 _"Are you lucky? Right now, living this life, is that really lucky? That cat, that you killed, when you were fourteen, remember that cat? Yeah? What was her name? Death? Thought so. You killed Death. But can you kill Impulse?"_

The little boy had an old, white cat at his side, and his eyes were wide in horror. "Nancy?" The boy asked. "What are you doing?"

She hadn't understood what Hawkeye had meant, by killing Impulse. But now, she sees it all. The brainwashing, the educating, the murdering and lies.

It goes against her very DNA to put her gun away, but Natalia has always liked a challenge. _Yes,_ she thinks, _I can kill Impulse._ So, she looks at the old white cat and the young, innocent child, and slowly lowers her gun.

"Run, boy." She murmurs. "Run away, and don't come back. If you do, you'll be dead."

He hesitates for only a moment, and then flees, to a new life where no one knows his name.

When Hawkeye comes around again, she asks him if she can come with him.

"You don't even know who I work for." Hawkeye had said. "Or my real name."

"No," Natalia had agreed, "But whoever it is, whoever you are, it has to be better than my old boss."

A smile spreads across Hawkeye's face and, when he handcuffs her (for safety reasons, he's not stupid), Natalia allows him. For the first time in her life, she feels in charge, not just a beautiful body and deadly eyes.

The world loves a pretty face.

They worship them, crowding around innocence and talent like a moth to a flame. Natasha Romanoff has known this since grade school. Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool. So, to succeed, she forced herself to perfection, to be pretty and deadly all at once.

But, there is one thing the world loves more.

And that is a good, old fashioned monster.

So, when every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent whispers about her when she walks by (even here, she has a reputation. Lovely.), she isn't all that surprised.

Monsters captivate more than pretty faces.

And Pretty monsters captivate more than anything else ever could.

 **...**

When Natasha Romanoff sees the young spies and assassins, so eager to kill, so brainwashed and impulsive, her heart aches. She knows how they think: That they are the lucky ones, that they are the wise and beautiful ones.

She used to think the same.

When Fury sends her to convince or kill them, she tries her hardest to bring them home. "They tell you you're lucky, don't they? They used to tell me that, but let me ask you this: Do they ever let you hold a child, just for the sake of holding? Or watch TV? What about go to dances, just for grins? I didn't think so. And yet, you're lucky. Because you kill. You, my dear, are not lucky. You are being used. Wake up, before it's too late."

"What do you know about my line of work?" They'll spit, "You're a no good _American."_

And she'll polish her gun, a smirk on her lips, before saying to that poor assassin, "My name is Natasha Romanoff. I was one of twenty-eight Black Widow agents of the Red Room. I was the best. Better than the best. I was perfect. And then...," she'll leave them astounded, because even after all these years, her reputation of red still upholds.

They'll say, "And then?"

She looks at her case, right in his or her's eyes, and she'll say, "I woke up. People like you, or like I was, we're not lucky. We're enslaved." And she'll lean in, close, and she'll say, "Would you like to know what lucky is?"

And, on her good days, they'll say, "Yes."

But on her bad days, she's left a monster, disposing of their bodies and washing her hands of the never-ending blood.

 **...**

Every young one she's ever saved is without a job, now, but they'll contact her sometimes, to say they're okay, and she's thankful that they think of her, really, she is.

She thinks she got it right, taking all her dignity and getting the hell out, as soon as she woke up. She's heard it both ways, that she's lucky, and unlucky, but at the end of the evening, here's what she believes:

If you can make your own decisions, if you're not brainwashed into relying on a person or, God forbid, the government, then you're lucky. However bad your life is, you've got freedom, and if that's not luck, then Natasha doesn't know what is.

So she figures yeah, she might be a monster, but she'll be damned if she's not a lucky one.

* * *

 _"It was a few years later, I showed up here.  
_ _And they still tell the legend of how you disappeared.  
_ _How you took your money, and your dignity, and got the hell out."  
_ **~Taylor Swift, _The Lucky One._**

* * *

 **The format on this is kind of messy, so forgive me for that. I didn't mean to confuse anyone by my wonky writing pattern.**

 **Feedback would be lovely.  
Joss.**


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